This is the first major update in quite some time, and it holds several new features that will hopefully make YouTube5 even more useful.

First off, Vimeo had made some changes to their system recently that rendered YouTube5 unusable. This update restores full support for Vimeo, and also makes it possible to view videos that are only available as Flash videos (provided you have the proper codec). Support for Facebook video is also restored once again.

The most useful new feature added in this release is the “Use original player” link, visible while a video is loading and when the info overlay is active. Clicking this link will replace the YouTube5 player with the Flash player it originally replaced. This way, whenever you run into a video that just won’t load in YouTube5, rather than having to disable YouTube5 in Safari’s preferences and reload the page, you can just click a link to get back to the original player.

There are a few small usability enhancements in this release as well. First, clicking on the video will now play or pause it, similar to the functionality of most Flash video players. Second, volume level is now persisted between videos, so you won’t have to keep turning it down if you’re using headphones.

Finally, I have enabled the 240p FLV size of YouTube videos. For this to work, you must have Perian installed, as it provides a Flash video codec to Quicktime. If you do not have Perian installed, you will have to utilize the “Use original player” link to use the YouTube flash player to view this size.